


born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward

by Red



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unreliable Narrator, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1694129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red/pseuds/Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During this war, you'll see all kinds of things. </p><p>And after--with nowhere to go and nothing else to do--you're bound to keep dreaming of those you've killed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward

**Author's Note:**

> To everyone I chatted with in #xmentales, as I finally just wrote the "Alex returns from the war" story I wanted, after all.

He starts going mad in the jungle. 

Who doesn’t? It’s no surprise to him, anyway, he's been losing his mind for days, weeks, months. Years, if he’s honest, ages longer than he’s been out in this pathetic fucking war. He’d been better off in solitary and never’d been shy to tell anyone so, but no. 

No, here he is, off his gourd from the minute the plane crashed and he got sent to foster and maybe even sooner, and he's in the middle of a godforsaken swamp, hallucinating. 

The last of daylight and he’s crawling through the dank rot of bushes alone, black ops nothing but code for _no one’s got your back_. Toad’s at least not far behind, if you trust the radio contact. Maybe fifteen, twenty miles; close enough for command to play like they’re working together, and Alex is just glad it’s Toad and not some kid, not one of those barely-toilet-trained mutants they keep sending over for cannon fodder. 

He’s just trying not to think of this next mission, or of the last. Powers aren’t a gift, not out here (not, he tells himself often, that he ever _truly_ believed his were), they’re only a weapon. One Alex’d think a fucking hell more ugly, if the Army weren’t spraying uglier and uglier shit all over this country every day. 

That's the first thing he thinks when he sees it. Fuck, that's all that goes through his head: _fuck, what did breathe in this time_. 

There’s little enough light this deep in, any time of day. The details are unsettling, vague in the dim of twilight. 

What he sees isn’t quite a person--not enough to startle him into firing--but it’s the shape of one. 

Slender. Tall enough--standing by a tree, where Alex can estimate--that he thinks, _Army if it's human at all_ , but there’s something immaterial about the figure. 

Like light passes around or _through_ it, and that thought makes his gut seize, that thought makes him think there’s something _familiar_ about it. 

Alex doesn’t say anything. He frowns at the figure for a long moment, long enough that he’d fuck up the mission if he waited any more. 

The figure doesn’t move. 

He’s seeing things. Everyone’s seeing things out here, it’s hardly news, so Alex starts slogging on again. 

He’s walking in a long arc that takes him by the figure, probably not much further than six yards. Alex keeps glimpsing back over as he approaches. 

It doesn’t solidify, there’s still that creepy etherealness. 

He can see the trees clean through it. 

But it turns, and it--it _watches_ him. Alex swallows, trying to shake the terror down. And the hope, too. Because it’d be one thing, that being some new mutant suckered into being a soldier for either side, but that’s definitely Darwin. 

That’s definitely a fucking hallucination, a ghost. Alex can’t help but be a bit superstitious--long enough out here, everyone is--and he can’t tell which is worse. Going mad, or being haunted. He just hopes it doesn’t--

“Alex?” 

_Talk_ , he finishes. Fuck. He keeps his eyes ahead. He’s losing it. 

“Alex, is that you?” 

Oh seriously. What sort of ghost asks that? Trust his delusions to be like this, least Darwin could do is be material. Material and naked, Alex corrects. Been a long war. 

“Hey. Seriously--”

“What do you think?” Alex hisses. He’s near parallel to Darwin now, close as he’ll be. 

“Alex, shit. I can’t believe it,” Darwin says, stepping--floating--closer. 

“ _You_ can’t believe it?” Alex whispers before he can help himself. “Fuck. Keep your voice down.” 

He adds the last like it _matters_ , like Darwin isn’t just the culmination of no sleep and whatever Monsanto shipped over this week, but Darwin starts whispering back. 

“Sorry, all right? Just never thought I’d get it this much together, you know. Still working on the eyes and all, but--” 

“I’d forget ‘em if I were you,” Alex interrupts. Darwin is close. Close enough that if Alex reached over, he could touch him. He could shatter this whole spell, shatter Darwin again, and Alex shakes himself. 

“Look. Been great seeing you again,” he says, because why _not_ be polite to your own hallucinations. “But I gotta get going here, so.” 

Darwin moves closer, like he’s gonna reach out for Alex, instead, and Alex’s blood runs cold. 

“Come on, that any kind of welcome?” 

“No,” Alex admits. He’s already walking away, slow and careful in the wet of the underbrush. “It’s not, but hell. You've been gone a long time.” 

_And I’m not surprised I chose now to trip about you_ , he almost adds. 

It’s also been a long time since Alex has thought too hard on that day, on what went down out at the complex. It’s been years, a decade of loss and way too many corpses for him to dwell on anything beyond survival. But the last village--and this next one. 

You see one person ripped up by your powers, you seen ‘em all. Alex is tired. Tired, and heavy, and dreaming up the first guy you offed is just natural. 

Still. Mirage or not, he expects Darwin to say something else, to call out to him. But he doesn’t hear anything as he carries on his way. 

And when he finally turns back, he doesn’t see anything, either. 

Alex isn’t sure what he’s feeling. Relief, or disappointment. 

-

The mission goes. 

It’s like any of the ones before. Any of the ones after. 

Toad catches up to him, with time. They travel back together, joking about the usual shit, close in that distant way of two soldiers old enough to know they probably won’t make it. Alex tells him about the hallucination, paring back some of the details, and Toad just smirks a lot, asks if he was hot. There’s not that many secrets worth saving, not when neither one of them have a reputation to uphold or a home to go back to. Alex just shoves at him. 

It’s only a few weeks after that they hear: they’re going home. It’s some big production--everything always is, with all these generals and all these sub-contractors, the war’s been a fucking mess beginning to end--and Alex can’t even be shocked when Raven shows up. Even less surprising, learning the whole going-home thing was a ruse. After long enough out here, you figure _why not_. Life’s cheap enough.

“Where’s Erik,” he’d asked. 

As the war had gone on, as he’d laid in swamps beside kids so young he can’t imagine ever being that age, Alex would think of them sometimes. Raven and Erik, Angel and the lot of them. It was hard not thinking they were right. It’s hard not wondering what it was like for Erik back then, getting in with this pack of children. Alex is nearly the same age now that Erik was then, and he feels uncountably old but not like he knows what to do, not like he’s an adult at all. 

He doesn’t think much about Charles. Hasn’t for a bit now, since Hank doesn’t even put up the pretense and there’s not been letters for ages. But sometimes he let himself imagine what he’d say if he saw _any_ of the rest of them again, but all he gets out when Raven’s there is, “where’s Erik,” asking if she’s coming with.

She’s working alone. She’s staying alone. 

Neither of those are a surprise, either. If there was ever a dream of mutant brotherhood, of community, it died a long time ago. 

The kids all look stunned. Toad’s still got two cigarettes left, and one of them, he lights for Alex. 

-

When he gets home, there’s not much of anywhere to go. 

There’s not for anyone, of course. There’s a lot of miles between there and here, and whatever they remembered of the states, that’s long since changed, too. Might as well be a different country, a different world. The kids head back to their families, if they got any that care. Ink just goes back to where he was living before, which is “between couches.” Toad says he’s going back to Philly, because hell, why not. Kept his head low there all those years before, he can keep it low again. 

It’s a solid plan, better than anything Alex has got. They shake at the bus terminal. They aren’t about to meet again. 

Alex takes the first bus he sees. Then he takes another. He takes a few rides, just to watch the country going past, trying to grow into the spaces freedom leaves. 

He winds up in a city where he rents a cheap hotel. He’s got some money, gone long enough without spending anything. Should probably buy a trailer or something, instead of wasting his money on nightly rent, but he can’t imagine anything more permanent than this. 

It’s on the sixth story, woefully small. He eats everything he can remember dreaming about in the jungle, and none of it tastes like he remembers. Were burgers always this soggy? Were shakes always this cloying, this sweet? The first week or two, he keeps trying. Even when idiot long-haired kids keep bumping into him, cussing him out for shit they think he did--when the reality is so much worse than whatever they’re imagining--even then, he keeps trying to find something that doesn’t taste like grease and ash. After a while, though--

After a while, it’s not worth the trouble. There’s a thousand noises in the city, and half of them make him think he’s on the verge of detonation. He gets instant everything, which is at least _supposed_ to taste like shit, and stocks up. 

He should look for a job, he keeps telling himself. It’s ridiculous, laying around a hotel like this, day after day; it burns him up, thinking what he’s acting like. But the hotel’s got a slow season, the owner’s sympathetic and keeps reducing the rate, because Alex is quiet and hasn’t blown anything up yet. The effort of anything beyond sleeping and fixing meals of packaged potatoes and cheap beer seems impossible. 

There’s not even a television in the hotel. Alex listens to the radio, but the news is just all same shit, different pile. When there’s a game on, that’s fine. Otherwise, he listens to music, to anything playing, and thanks the little luck he had, not getting stuck on some fucked-up drug out in the jungle.

And mostly, he’s sane enough. Days go by without him so much as hearing something, and if maybe sometimes he’s sleeping too much or hazy from drink or days seem to slip by like time’s mutable, he figures it’s at least not hurting anyone else. By and large, he thinks, he’s not even hurting himself. 

He does dream, sometimes, mostly of the jungle. But sometimes of Darwin, and when he first hears Darwin again, it’s gotta be a dream. 

There’s a splitting racket at his door one night. When Alex stands, the whole room seems to list to the side, he has to grab at the cluttered dresser. A few cans clatter down, and he hears Darwin first then, from the other side of the door, calling out. 

“Alex, you alright in there?”

Catching himself again, against the wall, Alex shakes his head. But unlike in the jungle, Darwin keeps talking. 

“You okay? Hey, it was rough finding you again. Let me in?” 

There’s stories about that, too, Alex is sure. You’re not supposed to invite ghosts in, right? Probably even less wise, letting in a hallucination, and Alex isn’t keen on seeing the empty hall. And he’s clammy, his stomach clenching again, and it’s only the drink and the sureity that this is all a dream that gets him to move, to take the few steps from bed to door and throw the door open. 

The hall isn’t empty. 

Darwin’s--Darwin. He’s not some insubstantial trick of the light in the trees. He’s standing there in denim and polyester like any normal person, he’s looking right at Alex like he’s the one seeing a ghost. 

“Jesus,” Darwin says, reaching over to grab Alex’s shoulder, and Alex sways against him. “You look like hell.” 

Laughing, Alex clutches at Darwin’s arms. He’s solid, warm; this is a hell of a dream. “Thanks,” is all he can manage before his stomach twists again and he realizes he’s probably about to wake up on the bathroom floor. 

“Uh, hold that thought,” he says, letting go of Darwin again to run gracelessly to the toilet, stumbling over his displaced clothes. It’d be shitty were Darwin really here, he thinks after the first heaves of vomit. Shitty and embarrassing, and he doesn’t know what to make of the sounds from beyond the bathroom door: Darwin asking after him again, once. The clatter of cans being picked up and swept aside. Silence, eventually. 

Alex brushes his teeth twice. 

And when he walks out, Darwin’s still standing there. The room looks different. Brighter, cooler, like the small window’s been propped open. 

“I get the feeling anything I say won’t be especially memorable,” Darwin says. “Maybe you should get some water and some sleep.” 

No matter how hard Alex stares, Darwin’s still just standing there, staring back. They’re just stuck there a minute, until Alex snaps under the weight of it. 

“That’s what you came to find me for? To tell me that? What the hell, man.” 

“I came here to talk to you about a lot more, but--” 

“I mean--what the hell.” Alex shakes his head. It’s absurd, all of this. Why’s he even fighting it? He looks from Darwin to the half-open window to the bed, then back at Darwin again. Darwin shrugs and waves back at the bed again, and even the way he moves it’s like Darwin’s really here again. Like Alex hadn’t forgot most everything about him, like those few months hadn’t been burnt out of his mind by this hideous fucking world. 

“What the hell,” Alex repeats, again. His eyes are watering from puking, he feels like shit. “Darwin, shit.” 

“Okay. Come on,” is all Darwin says. 

And there’s still no telling if it’s just another delusion or whatever, not while he’s still holding some of his liquor. 

Why fight it. 

“Serious, you’re halfway to falling over,” Darwin tells him, so Alex shrugs and crawls in. 

This is better than any of his other dreams since he got shipped back, anyway. 

But he should--his brain scrambles--he should catch Darwin up, a lot of shit’s gone down, it’s been a fucking-- 

It’s been a fucking decade, that’s all he can think. One hell of a decade. 

“Armando,” he slurs into the pillow, “there’s--man,” he laughs, wetly. “Christ. Angel, Sean, you know--” 

“Hey.” Darwin’s hand slicks his hair back. Alex doesn’t even remember when it’d got long enough to fall over his forehead, he can’t remember the last time he even fucking showered. “It’ll wait til morning, okay?” 

Definitely a dream, Alex tells himself. Might as well enjoy it. The slow scratch of Darwin’s fingers on his scalp, the soft drip of the sink, the foreignness of someone at his side--when’s he ever going to have this again? 

“We got time now,” Darwin is saying, but Alex is hardly listening. He’s drifting, nearly asleep, given over to the languorous pull of affection and intoxication. “Right? We got time.” 

He sounds exhausted, but not like he wants an answer.

Good, Alex thinks. Good, but he gives one anyway, muffled drunkenly against the pillow. 

“Something like that,” he says. And Darwin sighs, like he was the one alive during all this shit. Like he’s alive now, Alex corrects, laughing to himself. “Yeah, all the time in this fucking world.” 

There’s a long moment where neither one of them say anything. The radio plays statically on, the sink keeps dripping. Alex keeps waiting to wake up, but keeps slipping deeper into sleep.

Darwin gets in beside him, pulls the blankets up, and the weight he leaves is almost real enough.


End file.
